The flag-carrying airline giant, British Airways, found itself in a spot of bother this week when its social media team asked for personal data to be relayed publicly via Twitter. The BA social media team asked customers for personal information in order to comply with GDPR.

This unorthodox “interpretation” of GDPR has been identified by GDPR professionals as wilfully wrong and a distraction to the real issue facing BA and others – the problematic roll-out of GDPR compliance within their businesses.

There are several Tweet examples (with several more deleted in recent days) that have real customers providing addresses and passport numbers being sent via Twitter. Twitter – as a public forum – wasn’t BA’s best choice of discussion platform. The argument that this was necessary for GDPR is idiotic.